thermometers
by just like our last
Summary: maybe when midnight is here, you'll kiss me like you did last year


**Author's Note:** Just a short little Zevie fic. Also, the next chapter of _The Victorious Games_ is up, but for some reason it didn't send a notification email to me or any of my friends about it. So go take a look if you didn't get an email~

**Disclaimer:** I don't own How to Rock, trust me.

* * *

><p>They fall for each other in between sick days and late gigs, in between Kacey and Nelson and Kevin being themselves and in between absolutely everything else. They fall in love because of warmth, of poetry, of cliches and looks.<p>

"You didn't mean it," she whispers after a fight, and he just nods, and lets her grab his shirt and cry into it, both of them half drunk and neither really sure what she is talking about. They know something was lost that day, but they don't know what, it doesn't quite register until the next day when they realize that Gravity 5 is broken.

This is graduation, this is a place where groups get broken apart and people end up never seeing each other again, and you lose the person you thought you knew best. This is all the little things, the muddled afternoons on the dirty couch in that old garage, the summer days performing in the middle of an open field. This is life.

Stevie cries when she says goodbye to Kacey, for it's Kacey that is the sparkle in Stevie's life, it's Kacey that gives a glamorous and unrealistic solution to every problem the band ever faces, it's Kacey that let Stevie cry in her arms the night she realized she had fallen for Zander. It's Kacey that understands her in all the wrong ways, Kacey that can surprise you with how beautifully kind and how obnoxiously outgoing she is all in one day. It's Kacey that Stevie knows she loves like a sister, Kacey Stevie will never be able to replace. They hold each other in their arms and they both sob and promise that they'll never forget each other and that they'll write and call and email, promises Stevie knows they will both keep, no matter what it takes.

Stevie almost cries again when she says goodbye to Nelson and Kevin, but doesn't quite let herself; she loves them as brothers and you never cry when saying goodbye to your brothers, that's just how it is. She hugs them both and promises them she'll think of them every time she hears someone say "Furious Pigeons", and they promise they'll email her to keep in touch, and she knows they will.

But she really loses it when she says goodbye to Zander. She loses it, collapsing into his arms and letting herself go, reminding herself of all the feelings she never expressed, all the thoughts she never knew how to say aloud. She wishes it could be different, and now she is warm with a blush and she remembers that time he took her temperature, remembers the thermometers and the lines in between and the things left unsaid.

Science experiments and sick days, blushes and inside jokes. All of it seems unreal now, all of it seems a waste, because he does not know how she feels and now he never will, because in a few minutes they will never see each other again.

It is almost a routine now, she realizes, pretending she doesn't love him the way she does, cracking jokes and letting everything almost fall but not quite break. Cracked, she realizes.

She wishes they could just sing, wishes they could just sing and forget, lose themselves in the music the way they had done so many times before, forget the world and forget time and just stare at each other and_ listen_.

A walk is in order, a walk that she knows will break her heart, the closeness but distance of the pair of them tearing her to shreds the way it does every time she is with him. They are alone, leaving Kacey and Nelson and Kevin saying goodbye to each other between jokes and realizing how annoying they were to each other, and Stevie's hair blows in the wind as she walks down the sidewalk next to him, trying to avoid his gaze.

"I'm gonna miss this," Zander says with a sigh, looking towards the ground.

Stevie nods, her gaze focusing ahead of her, to the house down the street as she tries not to think of the emotional breakdown she had in his arms moments ago. "Me too."

"Stevie..." Zander starts, his voice uncertain. "Do you think we'll be okay?"

"That depends on your definition of 'okay'." There's no sense not being honest.

Zander chuckles. "Well, what's _your _definition?"

Stevie considers this. "To be okay, I'd have to leave here still holding onto the person I love most in the way that I want to be holding onto them."

"Who's that?" Zander asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Um..."_ Well_, she thinks,_ if I don't say it now I'll never say it. Besides, he'll never see me again, so what does it matter if I embarrass myself? _"You."

And then she's running, a blush hot on her cheeks as she darts away from him without looking back, cursing her own stupidity as she runs, faster and faster, hoping maybe she'll make it home and she can board the door and make her parents tell him she's sick and can't see visitors or something stupid like that.

But she must have forgotten that he was in track, for he's matching her pace, not a step behind, running alongside her patiently and hopefully, neither of them able to speak while they run, and she instantly curses her forgetfulness as she tries to outrun him, never succeeding. And, since he's in track and she's, well, _not_, she falls onto the grass some ways down the street, probably in front of a stranger's house but she's too tired to notice. He sits down next to her and waits for her to catch her breath, and they are both sweating when Zander says, "Me too."

"What?" Stevie's head snaps towards him so fast she probably nearly breaks her neck.

"I, um... I love you the most."

"...The same way I love you?"

"Yes."

The word that comes to mind when he kisses her a moment later is_ cracked_, indecisive and almost too late yet still so real, so perfect and almost too heartbreaking.


End file.
